


we will never be the same again

by ataxophilia



Category: Chaos Walking - Patrick Ness
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gore, Guns, Knives, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-25
Updated: 2013-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-06 00:23:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1100283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ataxophilia/pseuds/ataxophilia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(None of them can kill, though. Killing is hard, despite the walkers not looking much like they were ever human at all, all their insides spilling out, "Lookin' just like spackling paste," as Davy points out with a grim kind of fascination.) Zombie Apocalypse AU for the CWSS13.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we will never be the same again

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas, small-person-racist! I had a lot of fun writing this - I hope you enjoy reading it! 
> 
> It is a Zombie Apocalypse, so warnings for gore, death, vomit, and mentions of guns and knives. 
> 
> Unbeta'd, so all mistakes are my own.
> 
> Written for the CWSS13.

The first walker that Todd kills used to work in McDonalds. She still has scraps of her uniform hanging off the edges of her body, browner than they ought to be from the blood, when Todd's knife goes into the back of her skull. Her nametag is still attached, but Todd looks away before he can read it. He doesn't want to know. He wouldn't know anything about any of the walkers if he had his way, but it's impossible to ignore the details written in the remains of faces and bodies and clothes, even when the walkers are chasing them through the streets. A lifetime of casual observations makes for a habit that's hard to break.

It happens three streets away from home, which, these days, is a rundown old supermarket with those metal barriers down over the doors and one of them - Todd, Viola or Davy - on lookout. They were lucky, those first few days, when the chaos hit hard and fast, because they had each other and they had the shop, and they had Manchee too, who worked as a second guard until a walker caught hold of him and dragged him away.

Todd had cried for the first time since everything started that night, staring out at the road the walker disappeared down as though he expected to see Manchee racing down it towards them, alive and whole and well again. Viola stood with him until the sun came back up and he gave in, her eyes wet but her cheeks dry, one hand steady on his shoulder.

Davy scoffed at them both, muttering under his breath about being more attached to a dog than to any person, but when Todd took over the lookout shift there was a bar of chocolate and some precious coffee waiting for him. They'd all lost people by then, after all. For all his posturing, Davy was just as scared and just as lonely as the other two, and half as able to cope with it.

The chaos was like growing up overnight, the three of them hardening from only-just-out-of-childhood to survivors in a matter of hours. "It's a good thing we have each other," Viola used to say, back at the start, mostly to Todd but sometimes to Davy too, on the better days. She stopped saying it after a while, once the effect wore off, when A Good Thing started meaning a fresh supply of food and a day without an attack, but it didn't make it any less true. Todd pictures it, every so often, during the long nights watching for movement on the streets; what he would be like by now without Viola to quiet his rage or Davy to help him turn to steel. Dead, probably. One of the corpses they all try to ignore. They work well as a team, better than they each would alone - the whole being bigger than the sum of the parts, Viola would say, in that casually intelligent way she sometimes slips into. All their skills and temperaments bouncing off each other, until they have something close to a chance.

None of them can kill, though, not even when the walkers get too close to the shop for comfort. They throw empty cans and bottles, anything inedible they can get their hands on; Davy, who stole his father's gun after his father started showing symptoms, fires warning shots at the boldest walkers - but they don't kill. Killing is hard, despite the walkers not looking much like they were ever human at all, all their insides spilling out, "Lookin' just like spackling paste," as Davy points out with a grim kind of fascination. Killing takes a kind of coldness none of them can find - least, not until they're trapped in a corner by a walker who was a skinny blonde McDonalds worker before the chaos hit, and the knife in Todd's belt is the only way they're getting out alive.

Killing, Todd learns, takes more than just ice. It takes a calculation, desperation raised to the power of fear plotted against the way the body used to belong to a Debbie (Todd doesn't look away fast enough; Todd reads the tag). Not the kind of problem they were ever asked to solve before, in maths lessons that feel like they happened centuries ago, but the most important one in this new world. The answer is easy to find; Viola's fingers tight around his wrist, Davy's breathing heavy in his left ear, the knife a solid weight against his hip. The walker's eyes - Debbie's eyes - the same glazed greenish grey as all the other walker eyes they've seen. The whole world narrowing down to all the things Todd will lose if he doesn't and all the things he'll lose if he does.

Easy.

There's resistance and then there isn't. Todd's knife is a heavy one, a gift from the surrogate fathers who swallowed too many pills and curled up against each other when the symptoms started showing. The walker who used to be Debbie makes a quiet, confused noise as she stumbles and drops to her knees, jerking Todd down with her. Davy mutters a quiet curse. Todd pulls the knife free, spackling paste brain clinging to the blade, and drops it by his side.

For a moment no one moves. Todd's breath feels sticky and heavy in his throat. Later, he'll throw it up in the dirty alley behind the store, but now he's too caught up in a numbing kind of shock. Davy is watching the knife like it'll come alive and kill them all as punishment. It's Viola who crouches down beside Todd and presses her forehead against his cheek, murmurs, "We need to get back home," when he doesn't flinch away from her. Her fingers feel like a brand on his upper arm as she pulls him back to his feet, searing even through his shirt. He still can't look away from the body on the floor - she can't have been much older than the three of them, maybe it was her first job, maybe she was on her home with her first paycheck when the symptoms hit, maybe she was saving for university, for Christmas, for a trip around the world, maybe-

"Todd," Viola says, catching hold of Todd's chin and forcing him to turn to face her. "We've got to leave. Now." She hold his gaze, eyes fierce and steady and safe, until Todd nods unsteadily, and then she turns her attention to Davy, who is watching them both with pale cheeks. "Go see if there are any more outside," she tells him. Davy hesitates, his eyes flicking between her and Todd, but eventually he pushes past the two of them and heads to the door. 

Once he's gone, Viola stoops to pick up Todd's knife and shove it into the waistband of her jeans. "You saved us," she says as she straightens, wiping her palms down her thighs before reaching out to brush Todd's hair out of his face. "Okay? You saved us, and that's what's important." Her fingers linger on Todd's jaw, filthy and calloused but gentle all the same, and there's something comforting in how normal the gesture feels. Like something she would have done before the chaos. 

He musters up a shaky smile, tries to convey his gratitude through it. It's worth the effort it takes when the line of Viola's mouth softens slightly and she leans in until their foreheads are resting together. "Thank you," she breathes as he clutches at her shoulders, and Todd feels like sobbing, feels like hiding here with Viola until they both fade away to nothing.

Davy breaks them apart with a curt, "We're clear," but despite the sharpness of his voice it's obvious he could have spoken earlier. Todd is grateful for the extra time, even if it doesn't feel like anywhere near long enough. He exhales slowly as Viola pulls away with one last press of her fingertips to his cheek, and turns to the door. 

When the chaos first hit, the open, empty streets felt eerie and wrong, too still and too silent after the bustle they'd grown up in. It didn't take them long to learn that the main roads are the safest; that it's best to be able to see the emptiness, because at least then they'll have ample warning when the walkers catch their scent. Now, with the body of Debbie-turned-walker-turned-corpse staring blankly at the wall behind him, Todd can't get out into the open fast enough. 

It takes them a matter of minutes to get back to their store. Todd stumbles into the cramped kitchen area as soon as Davy has the barrier up, pushing his hands under the tap to scrub the feel of blood and brains off his palms. His skin turns red raw and stings from the coldness of the water, from how hard he presses the scouring pad, but he welcomes the pain. It's a sign his efforts are working, that his mess is washing off.

He realises, once he's more or less clean, that they left the food they'd scavenged back in the room with Debbie (the name is stuck in his head like a chant, looping over and over and over until he just wants to scream to drown it out) in their haste to get back home. That means a whole day's work wasted with nothing to show for it - it means a whole day's scavenging worth of food gone, unless one of them wants to brave the room again. Todd doubts anyone will. He's not sure he'll be able to head down that road for a good while, let alone actually go into the house. His throat tightens up again at the thought, bile rising from his stomach - Debbie's body on the floor, Debbie's eyes glazed and vacant, Debbie's insides staining her uniform, Debbie's skull caving in under his knife - he closes his fingers into fists, nails carving bloody curves into his skin. The kitchen smells like dead flesh and decay. Todd's not sure whether it's real or not but it makes him gag regardless, his whole body shaking with it. 

He's stumbling out into the back alley before he's properly aware of it, one hand pressed against the rough brick to hold him up as he vomits onto the concrete, all the shouting in his head getting louder and louder until he's got tears running down his face, until he's not sure he can remember his own name over the din. Viola finds him out there like that, still clinging to the wall for support, eyes shut and face a mess. "Oh, Todd," she murmurs, her clever, clean fingers pulling him over to the door and into the warmth of the store, where he can collapse against the kitchen cupboards and lean into her shoulder when she kneels down beside him. "Todd," she repeats, soft and achingly sad, and folds her arms around him. "Todd, it's alright. You're alright."

Hot water is a precious commodity so Viola doesn't smell all that fresh, and her top is stained with dirt and sweat and god only knows what else, and there's still blood and vomit smeared down Todd's leg, but when he buries his face in Viola's shoulder he feels closer to home than he has since this disaster first started. "I hate this," he whispers into her skin, the words falling from his tongue as heavy as a confession. "All of it. I hate it." 

Viola's fingers curl tight in his shirt, against his back, and she presses a desperate kiss against his hair. "I know," she tells him. "I know, Todd. I know." 

"It's-" Todd starts, swallows, lifts his head to look Viola in the eye. "It's a good thing we have each other," he says, and hopes she can read everything he's putting behind it.

Being Viola, she understands him perfectly. "It is," she replies, voice catching on a broken laugh. Under all the grime, all the misery clinging to her smile, she is radiant, the sun in Todd's stormy new world, and he is so grateful for her that he swells with it, feels it solid and strong inside his chest, like a second heart beating in time with his first. 

She is what keeps him alive, she and Davy and this little haven they've carved out for themselves in this hell. They keep his blood pulsing round his body and his lungs inhaling and exhaling, and he needs them like he needs oxygen, and now, in this chaos, needing them feels like the most natural thing in the world.


End file.
